


One Microscopic Cog In His Catastrophic Plan

by imogenbynight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: End of S9, M/M, Mark of Cain, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 15:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1555430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere, Dean is wielding a blade. Somewhere Castiel can't reach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Microscopic Cog In His Catastrophic Plan

Somewhere, Dean is wielding a blade. Somewhere Castiel can't reach.

He can feel it as acutely as if Dean were right here, though, can almost smell the copper-sweet of blood as it clings to metal.

Each throat that Dean sinks a blade into gives the mark a little more power. Each death he brings makes it sing, it's voice a sound of violence in the veil, moving swift along the channels that until now had been only for prayer. Castiel fears the moment when it is the first blade he's holding; when the weapon and the mark collide, converge at full power.

The foreign grace within Castiel crackles like ice at the touch of such malevolence, even at this distance, and he considers the possibility that the next time Dean finds himself in Purgatory, it will be because neither Heaven nor Hell will take him. The thought makes his chest ache, and he swears. Curses under his breath. He tastes the bitterness of it, yet at the same time feels how satisfying it is to rage aloud, to spill feeling outward into the world, and repeats it. Louder. Cruder. His anger tumbles out of him in a torrent, crashing, and he finds himself standing stock still over the splintered remains of young oak.

The angels who have decided to look to him as leader have stopped in their tracks, have turned to watch him with caution in their eyes. They hear the singing blade but don't feel it the way he does. They didn't know Dean before. The sting and bitter bite of the mark and it's desire for death, it's hunger and craving for hatred and carnage is unpleasant to them, but bearable. A faceless evil. For him, it's the destruction of something he's held close, something he kept in the parts of himself that not even Heaven could touch. Dean is not only the righteous man, but the man who taught Castiel to feel. To love, to _love_ \--and how he has loved, with every single molecule of his being. And now the hurt of it is bearing down, the pain of it deep, the joy of it dulled by distance and death of the soul.

He understood while he was human. Learned what it was to love, though in some ways he had known for years. But now... Now, it's not just taste that has been reduced to molecules. His every emotion has been deconstructed, back to it's base parts, every little component laid out before him like threads waiting to be stitched into a tapestry. But they are a tangled mess of color, too many, looped and twisted and twined together, and the whole image refuses to come. He sees nothing but trees, and not a forest in sight. God, he aches for the forest.

In the crushing dark, he presses his eyes tightly closed and breathes in. The air here is rich and pungent with earth and rain and animal waste, and he tastes it, smells it, feels it as a physical thing in his lungs. He feels ill. He never felt ill before. It's some remnant of his time as a human; like the too-short coat he wears, it serves to remind him of what he had when he had thought himself lacking.

Now, though, he _is_ lacking. Truly.

He may have grace, but he would willingly give it up if it meant helping Dean. At the rate it's fracturing, he may have to do so regardless.

He turns to his flock.

"I'm sorry," he says, voice too loud in the quiet of the woods, "I have to go home."

They will find their own way to the other fallen angels, he thinks. He has his family to think of. They have to come first.

***

When he arrives at the bunker two days later he calls Dean's cell, and Sam answers.

"I'm outside," Castiel tells him, and a few minutes later Sam opens the door. It's late, and the only light comes from the shrouded moon, reflecting off the hood of his Lincoln and casting a pale glow over Sam's face. One look at his grim expression tells Castiel that while all hope is not lost, there's not much left, either.

"I'm getting worried," Sam tells him without preamble, and Castiel steps forward to hug him. It seems like the right thing to do. Sam claps him once on the back, and Castiel steps back, trying for a smile and falling horribly short.

"I'll speak with him, if you think it will help."

Sam snorts, humorless, and shakes his head as he shuts the door with a heavy clunk. It echoes, ominous and cold, through the bunker.

"Good luck," he says.

He sounds tired. Castiel can relate.

***

It's not surprising that he finds Dean in the dungeon, but still, it hurts to see him there, hand hovering over a spread of tools not unlike those he'd used on Alastair.

Crowley is strapped to the chair at the room's center, and though he doesn't appear to have yet been subjected to any of Dean's methods of persuasion, there's the telltale smell of blood and sulphur on the air. A dark smear of something acrid and foul on the floor under his feet tells Castiel the last demon to sit here had not been dispatched without shedding a few pounds of flesh first, and something turns in his stomach.

"Did Sam send you?"

Dean doesn't look at him when he asks, still focused on the assortment of instruments laid out on the table.

"Should he have?"

"He seems to think this is..." Dean huffs, bitter, " _inhumane_ , I think he called it."

Crowley sneers at him, and through his parted lips Castiel sees what has been done, and why he hasn't spoken since he walked into the room.

His teeth are missing; his tongue torn out. It's a gruesome sight, and as much as he'd like to send Crowley directly back to Hell, he doesn't want this. Certainly not when it's Dean who's dishing it out.

"What have you done?" he asks Dean, resisting the urge to physically pull him from the room.

"Turns out that his bite was as bad as his bark," Dean says, "so I nipped 'em both in the bud. You're gonna be a cautionary tale, right, _Fergus_?"

Crowley flips him off, and Dean picks up a set of what appear to be pruning shears.

"Unless you feel like being helpful, that finger's gonna go the same place as your tongue."

Smirking toothlessly, Crowley's eyes glimmer with what Castiel can barely believe is mirth. In an instant, Dean moves forward, grasping the offending finger and bending it back until the expression flickers and fades.

"You gonna cooperate now?"

Crowley swallows hard, and under sufferance, blinks. It's deliberate, hard, and Dean seems momentarily satisfied.

"Do you still have the first blade?"

With a flex of his jaw, Crowley blinks twice, and Dean bends his wrist, manoeuvring the shears until the blades rest firmly around his middle finger. Wheezing, Crowley struggles in the chair. Blood flecks sputter from his lips, over his chin, onto Dean's arm.

If Dean notices, he isn't bothered by it.

"Dean," Castiel says, unable to watch any longer, "stop."

Dean doesn't.

"Where is it?" he demands.

Desperately, Crowley looks at Castiel with wide eyes, opening and closing his mouth as if to remind him that he's physically incapable of answering, and Castiel steps forward, reaching out to Dean's shoulder.

"Dean--"

The moment he makes contact, Dean jerks away as if burned and lashes out, striking him. The shears collide with the side of his face, and Castiel feels blood well up underneath his eye, feels it sticky and hot where it runs down his cheek, through his stubble, onto the collar of his shirt. He blinks, and the damage heals. The blood remains.

For a few seconds, Dean stares at him as if he's a stranger. Even when recognition seems to come over him, he is unfazed. Blank. Somewhere behind his eyes, Castiel can see his soul is struggling to breathe. His own breath barely comes, as if in sympathy, and he wonders if it will be as therapeutic to cry now that he has grace again. He feels like he might. _Dean deserves so much better than this_ , he thinks.

He wants to burn the mark off of his arm, to burn it out of him until his soul comes back to his eyes. But it doesn't work like that. He doesn't quite know how it works.

"You good?" Dean asks, though it seems more like an ingrained, knee-jerk response to seeing blood on a friends face than any kind of care, and that hurts worse than any blow Dean could deal him.

"No," Castiel says, sadly, "I'm not."

With no other choice that he can see, Castiel leaves him in the dungeon, and feels the spectre of him trailing behind him as he makes his way upstairs.

***

"I need it," Dean tells him a few hours later, walking into the library where Castiel has been sitting at the table, staring at a web page that Sam loaded for him before heading to bed around midnight.

It's all about the mark, and what scholars believe it means, and though he knows every version of this story of Cain and Abel he reads it anyway. Hopes to gain some other insight from the words if they are presented to him in a slightly different way.

Now, looking up to see Dean with the evidence of his activities in the dungeon scrubbed away, he could almost believe that it was a nightmare. A bad dream he's remembering from his time as a human.

If it weren't for the fact that he can see the mark, ugly and red on Dean's forearm, he'd be able to pretend as much. But it's there, and it's like a snake waiting to strike. It makes Castiel's skin crawl.

"You don't," he tells him, "you only think you do."

"It's the only way to kill Abaddon," Dean says, as if Castiel is unaware.

He shakes his head, closing the laptop.

"What did you say to me," he says, "all those years ago, when I was foolish enough to try and save the world on my own?"

"Don't."

"No, Dean. You said that when things like this happen, we figure it out together. And yet you--now--you didn't speak with me. Or Sam. You just..."

"Well I hate to break it to you, Cas, but the warning's a little too late."

"Yes. It is. And I am more sorry than I believe I've ever been."

Dean doesn't answer, just stares flatly at the floor, and Castiel sighs. Rests his hands on the table.

"I'm not angry with you," he says after a moment.

"Just disappointed, right?" Dean says dully.

"No. Not disappointed, either. I'm... I don't actually know how to describe this. But I think the most apt way to put it is that this situation sucks."

Dean quirks a wry smile. Castiel wishes it were a real one.

"Can't argue with that."

***

He's been at the bunker for two weeks, now. Keeping close, keeping watch.

Crowley is still alive--just barely--and no amount of reasoning with Dean has been able to stop him from dishing out more and more creative forms of torture to make him give up the blade's location. Why Crowley hasn't just given it up yet is beyond him, but the ex-King always did have an agenda, and Castiel doesn't doubt that he's got one now, too.

Between himself and Sam, they've been unable to find a single clue on how to get Dean free from the mark's hold, and their only hope is that Crowley will continue to withhold the information he has. If Dean gets his hands on the first blade, they'll have no hope at all.

Despite barely using it, his stolen grace has been fading, flaring up only to send electric spikes of pain through him. He can feel it harming his vessel, crackling under his skin, but knows that he needs it, just in case. If Dean slips through the cracks, becomes wholly overcome by the mark, all signs point to indiscriminate killing. As he sees it, he might be the only one capable of protecting Sam if that happens. And he can't do that without grace.

To reserve what little juice he has left, he's been living as a human, tamping down on his power and putting it into what Sam likes to call standby mode. He sleeps. He eats. He, much to his displeasure, urinates. It's tedious, and he wishes that it were as simple to switch off the sensory overload. That, though, seems impossible to avoid, and as a result, every bite of food he consumes is utterly disgusting.

It's been a long time since someone prayed directly to him--someone who wasn't a Winchester, anyway--so the first time it happens, a few minutes after crawling into bed, he thinks he imagined it.

It comes again, though, a moment later.

Whoever it is doesn't say much of anything beyond his name, and it is strained, as though even making the prayer is a hardship it can barely endure. The third time, it seems a little louder, a little more desperate, and he finally recognises the voice.

As quietly as he can, Castiel pads down the stairs, and is relieved to find the dungeon empty of anyone but Crowley. The demon looks happy to see him. Castiel loathes the expression.

"What do you want?" he asks, and Crowley lifts his one good hand as far as he can from the binding leather strap, motioning for a pen. Castiel obliges.

Scratching at the paper, he scribbles out a note, and Castiel tilts his head to read as he goes. It's entirely written in Armenian script that he's surprised Crowley knows.

"What is this?" he asks, and Crowley just raises an eyebrow at him, scribbling brief extra line on the paper in the middle of a sentence. When he's done, he gestures for Castiel to take it and shoos him away, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the chair.

Castiel leaves without another word, and as he rounds the corner of the hallway, he finds a half-asleep Sam making his way back to bed.

"He's drinking again," Sam tells him quietly, glancing back toward the library.

"At least that means he isn't killing anything tonight," Castiel says, and Sam nods, grim.

Holding up the slip of paper, Castiel gestures toward Sam's open door.

"Crowley," he says by way of explanation, and Sam follows him without question.

Despite Crowley's terrible penmanship, Castiel is able to translate the note quickly, and he reads it out to Sam as he goes.

> 
>     The mark is pure evil. Grace is pure good. Your best chance   
>     > at stopping him at this point--- _he can't read this, you_  
>     >  de-feathered twit--is getting your chocolate in his peanut   
>     > butter, if you catch my drift. See if you can't flush out all  
>     > that evil with a little holy righteousness. Maybe I was stupid   
>     > enough to help him get the mark in the first place, but I'm   
>     > cutting my losses now while I've still got losses to cut.

Sitting on the edge of his desk, Sam exhales, thoughtful.

"Do you think it could work?"

Castiel lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

"Possibly. This grace is weak at best, so it may only lessen the mark's hold on him. It's still worth a short."

It might be their only shot, he thinks, but it doesn't need saying. Sam knows as well as he does that if they don't do something soon, Dean won't be there to save. He's barely there now.

"So how do we do this?" Sam asks, "What are our options?"

Castiel frowns tightly. 

"The transfer of grace can occur in three ways," he says, "the simplest would be to just cut it out, as I did to take the grace I currently possess."

"Won't that hurt you, though?"

"It would likely kill me."

Running his hands through his hair, Sam huffs out a breath.

"Okay then. Plan B?"

"If we can convince Dean to consent to me taking his body as a vessel, that would work. Though I highly doubt Dean will agree to that, especially in his current state."

"Then what's the third way?"

"It can be imparted as a gift," he says, "but... for an angel to offer another their grace, even just a small _part_ of it... It is an act of love only practised between those who are bound to one another. And for it to be taken, that love must be--"

"Reciprocated," Sam guesses, and Castiel nods.

"If it isn't, the grace will not transfer. So, we're out of options," Castiel says with a sigh, "and back to the first square, as they say."

"Square one," Sam corrects him absently, "but, uh... look. This, uh..."

Sam huffs out a breath, looking down at his hands, and his jaw clenches. It makes Castiel nervous, that look. As though Sam is uncertain of what he's going to say. That, he thinks, is rarely a good sign in moments like this.

"What is it, Sam?"

"Can I ask you something? And don't--if I'm way out of line, feel free to clock me, but... Would that last one work from your side?"

"I don't--"

"Do you love him?"

The second the words have left Sam's mouth, all sound seems to be sucked from the room, and Castiel's throat closes up. The moment hangs, and Sam watches him, waiting.

"I mean, I know you love both of us," he says after a pause, "And, y'know, we do too. You're like part of the family. But are you--"

"You're asking if I'm in love with your brother."

Sam gulps, nods. Castiel breathes in deeply, tastes the cold air on his tongue. Tastes dust and damp and fear.

"It doesn't matter."

"You do," Sam says, slightly awed but not nearly as surprised as Castiel thinks he should be, and he narrows his eyes at him.

"It doesn't matter," he repeats more firmly, standing and moving toward the door, "a gift of grace in an act of love must be accepted fully, and Dean would not accept this from me, so  _it doesn't matter_."

"Try."

Turning back, Castiel looks down at his feet, shakes his head slowly, palms spread helplessly.

"Sam--"

"Please, Cas," Sam repeats, soft, encouraging, "Just... trust me. And try."

Reluctantly, and feeling like a fool for even considering it, Castiel tells Sam he'll think about it. He leaves the room without another word.

***

Now, at almost three o'clock in the morning, he's trying to sleep, and there's someone moving in the hallway. With his head pressed to the pillow, Castiel turns his eyes to the door, watching the thin crack of light below as it flickers briefly black. He can hear footsteps, dragging slow; a heartbeat loud as a drum; the quiet drip of something viscous on the cold floor.

The dripping moves with the shuffling feet, and with a slow blink he pushes out of bed and into the bathrobe that has become his own.

When he opens the door he sees Dean halfway down the hall, right hand clawed at his side. He's staring away, his back slightly hunched, and from his palm the _drip, drip, drip_ of blood continues. There's a trail of it leading back, down around the corner. Castiel doesn't doubt it goes all the way to the dungeon. He wonders if Crowley is still alive.

"Dean?"

There's no response, and Castiel steps forward, gingerly making his way closer as though about to diffuse a bomb. In a way, he is.

"Dean, can you hear me?"

Closer, he can see chunks of flesh under Dean's fingernails where they've dug into his palm, can smell the sweetness of his blood, and before he can think about it he's reaching out to him.

Something in the touch snaps Dean out of his trance.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Dean says, _snarls_ , and pulls his arm away sharply. 

Castiel doesn't flinch. It isn't the first time this has happened. It won't be the last. He's gone from Castiel's sight, down toward the library, before Castiel can find anything else to say to him.

With a rolling in his gut, Castiel walks back the way Dean had come from, following the trail of blood until he reaches the dungeon door. Crowley is unrecognisable; his face a mess of exposed cartilage and muscle and flesh. He's still alive, to some extent.

Castiel steps as close to Crowley as he can bring himself to. The smell of sulphur mingles with blood.

"I can't heal you," he says, and Crowley flinches at the sound of his voice, "and to be honest I wouldn't if I could."

Crowley wheezes out a breath, and what's left of his mouth works frantically, desperately. It makes Castiel sick to think Dean did this. Dean did this and likely enjoyed it. 

Staring at Dean's handiwork, Castiel is horrified to realize that he no longer fears Dean's death. In every way that counts he's already gone. All the parts of him that made him who he was have been shed, dropped away like a snakes skin, and his soul is shriveled and shrunken, sapped of all it's light by the mark that feeds off him like a leech. A parasite.

 _Any day now_ , he thinks, _the mark will take him completely.  
_

He doesn't want to think of what that means, and reaches out, palm forward. Carefully, he rests it on Crowley's forehead. The demon actually seems to relax under the touch.

"This is better than you deserve," Castiel tells him.

The white burn of grace sings hot, and Crowley is gone. His body limp, bloody, dead. Castiel swallows around the lump in his throat.

Somewhere upstairs, he can hear Dean, pacing. He thinks of Sam's words. Of _how_ he might go about trying. It's hopeless. Laughable, really.

Not that he could laugh right now if his life depended on it.

Involuntarily, he lets out a sob, and it startles him.

In the pitch dark of the dungeon, with the blood of the dead king of Hell on his palm and a weight in his chest, he learns that crying does still feel the same as an angel.

It makes him feel raw, torn open, and something about it makes him want to do something. What that is, he doesn't know. He settles on cleaning up the mess. Puts away the blades and tools and drapes an old blanket over Crowley's body so he doesn't have to look at it.

When the dungeon is as clean as any dungeon can reasonably be, he heads to the bathroom to wash himself. Blood and grime spirals down the drain, and he steps from the water cleansed and pure.

 _It's a new day_ , Castiel thinks to himself, and breathes the steamy air, looking into the mirror.He promised Sam he'd try. Now is as good a time as any.

He finds Dean in the bunker's front doorway shortly after, staring out into the pre-dawn light. His shoulders are a hard line, the veins on his arms sticking out with tension as he clenches his fist around an absent blade, and Castiel pictures all the ways this could go wrong. Imagines the sting of that fist against his face; how far he might fall if Dean were to push him back. It's worth the risk, though. Of course it is.

Determined, now that he's decided to try, he ascends the final steps. Dean doesn't turn. Just keeps staring out of the open door, as if he's waiting for something. Perhaps the blade is calling to him. _I'll just have to call louder_ , Castiel thinks, and stops on the landing, right behind him.

"Dean," he says, and though he turns around to face him, Dean's eyes are distant, blank as stone. They're still green, though. There's still hope.

"What is it?"

With a breath to steel himself, Castiel stands a little straighter, meets Dean's eyes.

"I wish to give you a gift," he says, evenly as he can, "if you'll accept it."

"Unless it's Abaddon's head on a plate, I'm not interested," Dean says, moving to turn back around, and Castiel puts out a hand to stop him, grasping his shoulder.

"Please," he says, "just..."

Looking back at him, Dean's eyes narrow a little in suspicion, and Castiel lets his gaze flick between them before he cups one palm around his cheek and feels cool skin. Dean doesn't react beyond a confused frown. His body is tense, immobile under Castiel's hands. Emboldened, Castiel steps a little closer until his toes bump against Dean's.

"Cas?"

"Please accept this gift," Castiel says, and when his lips find Dean's parted on a breath, soft and warm and willing, the grace that passes between them sings. There are no words that weave from his tongue, but it speaks his love all the same, the light of grace winding out and wrapping over Dean, into him, forcing the darkness of the mark from his skin.

When Castiel next opens his eyes, his grace is gone, and Dean--Dean is glowing.


End file.
